Since the institution of business venture, large and small business owners alike have been investigating systems which bring new customers into the stream of activity.
According to marketing association statistics, United States companies spend over $200 billion dollars yearly on business-to-business (B2B) marketing programs, and the results in terms of return on investment (ROI) and qualified leads fall far short of expectations.
A large part of this failure can be attributed to the gap between Marketing and Sales regarding lead acquisition and qualification. Marketing techniques appeal to prospective leads which are at each and every stage in the purchase process and thus Marketing acquires leads with a mix of brand associations and response offers. Yet Sales qualifies leads based on their likelihood of yielding revenue within the normal sales cycle.
Predictably, in the past, Sales forces have not been able to qualify many of the leads acquired by Marketing departments. Just as predictably, Sales forces have turned to other lead sources in their search for better leads. This wholly undermines the ability of Marketing departments to measure qualification levels, track final outcomes and calculate marketing ROI.
In addition to the billions spent on marketing programs, companies are spending billions more on technology for various marketing, sales and customer service activities. Reports estimate that total spending in these genres of activity will grow from $13 billion to $19 billion from 2001 to 2005.
Prior methods and systems basically served to reach outside people, with no established relationship to company, and encourage them to look at the product or service performed. The instant invention provides the novel approach of a system and method that actually monitors, evaluates and processes already established relationships in a manner which qualifies these relationships for further evaluation levels. The system also provides for control by individual clients who are allowed to develop their own system of rules by which to evaluate responses from customers and prospective customers. Each client company develops its own rules driven segmentation strategy to sort leads into separate groups for personalized campaign development.